Just five weeks remaining before Microsoft Corp. hosts the channel world at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. And as Canadian solution providers prepare to show their prowess in numbers at the event, a little known solution provider from Finland called Innofactor is looking to grow its base through the show.
Innofactor is the top solution provider for Microsoft in Finland, a Nordic country of more than five million people. Company president Sami Ensio said Innofactor has been named Microsoft’s partner of the year and has been able to grow at a yearly clip of more than 100 per cent, thanks to a strategy that relies entire on the Microsoft stack.
According to Ensio, customers in Finland, along with its government, are Microsoft-oriented and while the country does has open source and IBM installations, it’s predominantly Microsoft for business and public sector.
“Finland is not a big market, but there are lots of companies that compete. In the channel here there are about five big players and they use all sorts of technology. It actually wasn’t so hard to get to be No. 1 because we don’t do multi-technology solutions. Innofactor only focuses on Microsoft technology. That wasn’t the case five years ago where there was more open source solutions. I think it was a wise move to go all in on Microsoft,” he said.
Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto provides Ensio an opportunity to learn what the vendor is planning for 2013 so Innofactor can prepare the next steps for its customers, especially around cloud and mobile solutions.
The company has taken a strategic bet on its own home-grown solutions for these two growing market segments, creating Innofactor Cloud and Innofactor Mobile to address the business needs of its customers.
Using SharePoint along with the Azure platform, Innofactor’s Content Distribution Service simplifies SharePoint publishing. Instead of spending weeks or months to publish public sites or intranets from SharePoint, it now takes days and at a much lower cost.
Innofactor’s cloud service improves speed to market, Ensio said. He believes faster deployment and faster IT workflows are the easiest way for publishing content to the “cloud” and back to “on premise”. Innofactor Cloud supports HTML5, the key technology in making internet easy to access by mobile devices so content can be accessed on mobile device as well as more traditional manners, he added.
Ensio said these Innofactor solutions could provide a competitive edge for Canadian solution providers. While at the event Innofactor will have eight employees searching for potential channel partners in Canada and internationally. Channel partners will be offered a change to resell Innofactor solutions. Innofactor will also have a booth at the Worldwide Partner Conference.
“About every 10 years or so the Worldwide Partner Conference is in Canada and for me this is an important and unique opportunity to meet Canadian partners as there will be more of them than in previous shows in the U.S.,” Ensio said.
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